Colangelo remains confident despite MLSE upheaval: Kelly

Ahead of Wednesday’s press conference, Tom Anselmi gave Raptors GM Bryan Colangelo the head’s up – there would be a second house cleaning in as many days at an MLSE franchise.

“I was surprised, but I think I was surprised in the same way everybody else was surprised, the same way Dave Nonis and Brian Burke were surprised,” Colangelo said before Wednesday night’s game against Philadelphia.

When they start clearing out cubicles at any business, a tremor goes through the herd.

If Colangelo’s worried about showing up at the office to find his desktop photos piled in a cardboard box, it doesn’t show. He was stretched out courtside during pre-game, shaking hands, looking as relaxed as a new hire.

“I’ve learned you can never operate out of fear,” Colangelo said. “I am unaffected by this.”

His team added the punctuation, wrestling the somnambulant 76ers into submission in a 90-72 game. It was unwatchable stuff. Coming when there is unprecedented corporate interest in the product, all that mattered was the win.

Clearly, the suits who just got their hooks into this billion-dollar enterprise have begun asserting themselves. Meetings are being taken. Decisions are being made. None of those decisions — both sins of action and omission — make any sense.

You don’t hire a guy who’s still working at another construction site to build you a house, a la Ryan Nelsen, the new absentee coach not really overseeing Toronto FC.

And you don’t fire the chef 10minutes before dinner service, a la Burke.

A cabal of one per centers behaving like frustrated fans is now running the biggest sports empire in Canada. The only difference between them and you is a) tax bracket and b) you probably have more sense.

As bad as their calls have been to this point, lumping Colangelo into the sacking frenzy would be worse still.

Having kept faith with him this far, and given the emergence of Jonas Valanciunas, DeMar DeRozan, Terrence Ross and Ed Davis this year, this string must be played out in order to be reasonably evaluated.

Yes, I can hear you screaming from here.

Please let Andrea Bargnani drift from your thoughts at this point. He’s drifted from everyone else’s at the ACC. You can’t put broken merchandise in the shop window. If you want to blame something for that, blame the floor at Portland’s Rose Garden.

Even accepting the permanent angst over Bargnani, common sense still dictates Colangelo should not be let go.

More to the point, he will not be. Certainly not yet.

The GM meets with the MLSE board three times a year. The key meeting comes in June, when he lays out his plan for the coming year. For what they’re worth, promises are made. Budgets are set.

Aside from exceeding his financial limits or replacing a head coach, Colangelo is empowered to independently make all basketball decisions after that point.

He meets with them again in October, to provide an update before the beginning of camp.

The last meeting comes in February, a mid-season check-in. That one is still weeks away.

It’s not the scheduled meetings that worry anyone. It’s the impromptu ones.

Colangelo ran his gauntlet through the board in mid-December, called up after a wretched start to the year to revisit the vision. The club’s sober second thinker, Wayne Embry, was called in from Arizona to attend. It was a ‘Make us believe’ moment.

And Colangelo is still here.

He received another gesture of public support — whatever those are worth these days — from the board’s point man, Anselmi, Wednesday.

“Bryan and his team are also in the midst of a building process,” Anselmi told the audience at Burke’s auto da fe. “As long as we continue to see progress, that’s what we want in the process.”

Colangelo is in the last year of his three-year deal, with a team option for a further year in 2013-14. That’s still up in the air.

“I’ve never brought up my situation (to ownership). It’s never been brought up to me,” Colangelo said, shrugging.

What’s the promise going forward? Colangelo isn’t offering one.

“A successful year would be making sure we take another step forward in the process of building a basketball team.”

The opaque nature of that statement gives you some idea why Bryan Colangelo has a job, and why Brian Burke is looking for one.

They like saying sports is a results business. That’s not true. There’s no business that has a higher tolerance for failure. What it is, is a messaging business. Colangelo’s signal talent as an executive is the ability to explain what he’s doing in a way that makes sense.

Out in the real world, where results actually matter, they wait to see how something’s turned out before they decide whether it works or not.

If it made sense to trust Colangelo to begin a three-year plan, it makes sense to let him get through all three years of it. April is the time for evaluations.

That’s how Colangelo explained it. That’s what MLSE’s Star Chamber is going to allow him to do.

‘We were one for three,’ the board will be saying to itself in a little bit. ‘Maybe if we owned a baseball team ... ’

Also, this is where you see the difference between a corporate guy like BCo and Burke. BCo could "sell" poop-on-a-stick. Burke is tough around the edges....Not a fan of either but the one who survived this shakeup happens to be the slick salesman. I think that may sadly be a sign of the new "corporate" MLSE conglomerate.

None of those decisions — both sins of action and omission — make any sense.

You don’t hire a guy who’s still working at another construction site to build you a house, a la Ryan Nelsen, the new absentee coach not really overseeing Toronto FC.

And you don’t fire the chef 10minutes before dinner service, a la Burke.

A cabal of one per centers behaving like frustrated fans is now running the biggest sports empire in Canada. The only difference between them and you is a) tax bracket and b) you probably have more sense.

As bad as their calls have been to this point, lumping Colangelo into the sacking frenzy would be worse still.

This sounds more like the excuses of a worried fan fearing changing.

I'd be highly disappointed if Rogers/Bell didn't step in and begin overhauling but rather maintained the status quo. I know nothing about Toronto FC so I won't comment there, but Burke clearly wasn't working. His world was much like Colangelo's. A GM of name and clout, making proclomations about what the team needed and how he could rebuild and be good at the same time. Claimed to go out and get those types of players. Chased big name free agents just to be stopped dead in his tracks. What happened? He failed miserably.

Colangelo is a near mirror to Burke just in a different sports realm. Its arrogance driving them to make mistakes. Confidence that a small short term taste of success is a meaningful step towards bigger things.

Sacking Colangelo would be the best thing this ownership group could do to take the right step forward. Maybe Colangelo is better than he shown. Maybe he still has certain abilities and ideas that could make him an elite or high quality GM. But its not happening here with the Raptors. He's shown nothing but an unwillingness to take the necessary steps to give this team a chance to be more than a mediocre team. He's fully of excuses and half truths and won't hold himself accountable. He's been a failure and made a mess of this team.

You can’t put broken merchandise in the shop window. If you want to blame something for that, blame the floor at Portland’s Rose Garden.

yes because the Portland Rose Garden forced him to select Andrea Bargnani and then use him as a franchise player. How could one possibly hold an individual accountable for their own actions? Thats ludicrous!!

Colangelo not only chose broken merchandise to sell but built and entire shop around the sale of broken merchandise. He shown not only that you can put broken merchandise in the window, individuals will still come and shop. Articles like this prove it.

I don't understand this article at all. Granted, I don't know the first thing about the decisions for the soccer team but that team has been a mess since its inception and how anyone can oppose a house-cleaning there baffles me.

As for Burke, he didn't deliver. But the bigger problem was that he didn't deliver despite running around with his chin out, bombastically claiming Brian knew best. If you're going to be a winner, hubris and bravado are good but if you're a loser, they make you, and your organization, look ridiculous.

With Colangelo, while I have no inside knowledge about waht MLSE is thinking at the moment, I have posted before that I do know people who know higher-ups at MLSE and what I always hear is that Tanenbaum and BC are close friends and that Colangelo is well-liked by the various power players there. Now, that only gets you so far, but it does go a long way.

They like saying sports is a results business. That’s not true. There’s no business that has a higher tolerance for failure. What it is, is a messaging business. Colangelo’s signal talent as an executive is the ability to explain what he’s doing in a way that makes sense

That is nonsense. If anyone can explain to me what the plan in Toronto has been the last 6 years I'd love to hear it.

From all of the reporting I have been able to ingest over the day I would guess that the real reason for BB's dismissal is yet to be revealed. Most likely it had to do with his penchant for acute abrasiveness and bombast. Probably this was fine in hockey circles but not in somewhat rarefied air of Bell's or Roger's board members. Simply put, he probably wasnt sufficiently deferential when questioned about his failures.

Not to side with Colangelo but I think the big difference between the two has been CLARITY about their goals for respective seasons. Ever since Burke took over, he has talked about the playoffs at the beginning of every season only to end up not fulfilling the promise. On the other hand Colangelo, but for a couple of times, has mostly made the playoffs when he promised playoffs and not made it when the plan was rebuilding. This CLARITY IMO is one of the things that's kept him in the job.

Like Anselmi said, they intend to make a decision when it's time(end of the year). Irrespective of the position Raps. are in, neither BC's option being picked up or firing will surprise me.

Not to side with Colangelo but I think the big difference between the two has been CLARITY about their goals for respective seasons. Ever since Burke took over, he has talked about the playoffs at the beginning of every season only to end up not fulfilling the promise. On the other hand Colangelo, but for a couple of times, has mostly made the playoffs when he promised playoffs and not made it when the plan was rebuilding. This CLARITY IMO is one of the things that's kept him in the job.

Like Anselmi said, they intend to make a decision when it's time(end of the year). Irrespective of the position Raps. are in, neither BC's option being picked up or firing will surprise me.

I think the big difference between Burke and Colangelo is Burke tells you directly what he is thinking with little finesse while Colangelo tells you directly what he thinks you want to hear with more finesse than the women's world figure skating championships.

If the bosses aren't happy with a guy like Burke, good bye.
If the bosses aren't happy with a guy like Colangelo, they wait a bit longer to see what happens.

I think the big difference between Burke and Colangelo is Burke tells you directly what he is thinking with little finesse while Colangelo tells you directly what he thinks you want to hear with more finesse than the women's world figure skating championships.

Yes quite apparently BC is a crafty and diplomatic GM and Burke is a 'tell it like it is' kind of guy. Only speculation but it's very possible that Burke said something that led to his downfall.

[QUOTE=carbonstar73;176272]Ahead of Wednesday’s press conference, Tom Anselmi gave Raptors GM Bryan Colangelo the head’s up – there would be a second house cleaning in as many days at an MLSE franchise.

“I was surprised, but I think I was surprised in the same way everybody else was surprised, the same way Dave Nonis and Brian Burke were surprised,” Colangelo said before Wednesday night’s game against Philadelphia.

When they start clearing out cubicles at any business, a tremor goes through the herd.

If Colangelo’s worried about showing up at the office to find his desktop photos piled in a cardboard box, it doesn’t show. He was stretched out courtside during pre-game, shaking hands, looking as relaxed as a new hire.

“I’ve learned you can never operate out of fear,” Colangelo said. “I am unaffected by this.”

His team added the punctuation, wrestling the somnambulant 76ers into submission in a 90-72 game. It was unwatchable stuff. Coming when there is unprecedented corporate interest in the product, all that mattered was the win.

Clearly, the suits who just got their hooks into this billion-dollar enterprise have begun asserting themselves. Meetings are being taken. Decisions are being made. None of those decisions — both sins of action and omission — make any sense.

You don’t hire a guy who’s still working at another construction site to build you a house, a la Ryan Nelsen, the new absentee coach not really overseeing Toronto FC.

And you don’t fire the chef 10minutes before dinner service, a la Burke.

A cabal of one per centers behaving like frustrated fans is now running the biggest sports empire in Canada. The only difference between them and you is a) tax bracket and b) you probably have more sense.

As bad as their calls have been to this point, lumping Colangelo into the sacking frenzy would be worse still.

Having kept faith with him this far, and given the emergence of Jonas Valanciunas, DeMar DeRozan, Terrence Ross and Ed Davis this year, this string must be played out in order to be reasonably evaluated.

Yes, I can hear you screaming from here.

Please let Andrea Bargnani drift from your thoughts at this point. He’s drifted from everyone else’s at the ACC. You can’t put broken merchandise in the shop window. If you want to blame something for that, blame the floor at Portland’s Rose Garden.

Even accepting the permanent angst over Bargnani, common sense still dictates Colangelo should not be let go.

More to the point, he will not be. Certainly not yet.

The GM meets with the MLSE board three times a year. The key meeting comes in June, when he lays out his plan for the coming year. For what they’re worth, promises are made. Budgets are set.

Aside from exceeding his financial limits or replacing a head coach, Colangelo is empowered to independently make all basketball decisions after that point.

He meets with them again in October, to provide an update before the beginning of camp.

The last meeting comes in February, a mid-season check-in. That one is still weeks away.

It’s not the scheduled meetings that worry anyone. It’s the impromptu ones.

Colangelo ran his gauntlet through the board in mid-December, called up after a wretched start to the year to revisit the vision. The club’s sober second thinker, Wayne Embry, was called in from Arizona to attend. It was a ‘Make us believe’ moment.

And Colangelo is still here.

He received another gesture of public support — whatever those are worth these days — from the board’s point man, Anselmi, Wednesday.

“Bryan and his team are also in the midst of a building process,” Anselmi told the audience at Burke’s auto da fe. “As long as we continue to see progress, that’s what we want in the process.”

Colangelo is in the last year of his three-year deal, with a team option for a further year in 2013-14. That’s still up in the air.

“I’ve never brought up my situation (to ownership). It’s never been brought up to me,” Colangelo said, shrugging.

What’s the promise going forward? Colangelo isn’t offering one.

“A successful year would be making sure we take another step forward in the process of building a basketball team.”

The opaque nature of that statement gives you some idea why Bryan Colangelo has a job, and why Brian Burke is looking for one.

They like saying sports is a results business. That’s not true. There’s no business that has a higher tolerance for failure. What it is, is a messaging business. Colangelo’s signal talent as an executive is the ability to explain what he’s doing in a way that makes sense.

Out in the real world, where results actually matter, they wait to see how something’s turned out before they decide whether it works or not.

If it made sense to trust Colangelo to begin a three-year plan, it makes sense to let him get through all three years of it. April is the time for evaluations.

That’s how Colangelo explained it. That’s what MLSE’s Star Chamber is going to allow him to do.

‘We were one for three,’ the board will be saying to itself in a little bit. ‘Maybe if we owned a baseball team ... ’[/QUOTE